Dear Fair Trade Campaigners (including your kids and students who are participating!):

I hope you had a very HAPPY WORLD FAIR TRADE DAY!!!

During this period when we are especially celebrating Fair Trade I wanted to CONGRATULATE and THANK YOU for all your incredible accomplishments this year, with a report-back about our successes and an invitation to view some cool videos!

Just a few reasons why I think YOU ROCK!!!:

1. We Want More from our S'mores 2008: Over 550 people from this listserv around the United States savored Fair Trade S'mores at summertime bonfire gatherings.

2. Reverse Trick-or-Treating 2008: 10-20,000 groups of schoolchildren, youth, and adults took action and reached nearly a quarter million households with informational materials through Reverse Trick-or-Treating

3. Global Exchange's Fair Trade Holiday Caroling 2008: Two wonderful examples of high-impact caroling groups: (1) The Montclair High School Fair Trade Club was filmed participating in Fair Trade Holiday Caroling for NBC's Channel 1 which reaches six million teens in high school homerooms nationwide, and was also picked up by NBC National primetime news, reaching millions more. (2) The Raging Grannies took the stage at a peace protest and an open-mic in San Francisco's South Bay. View both videos at http://www.globalexchange.org/av/index.html

4. National Valentine's Day of Action/GX Fair Trade Curriculum 2009: We set a goal of educating 3,000 kids about Fair Trade for the Second Annual National Valentine's Day of Action and, thanks to your outreach, we surpassed our goal! Educators in 29 states in the US, as well as a few schools abroad taught 3,297 young people Global Exchange's new Fair Trade cocoa curriculum in 127 classrooms. Three thousand is a truly enormous number of kids who have taken the first step toward a lifetime of thinking more deeply about the relationship between trade, human rights, and the environment and looking for the Fair Trade certified label. Combining the past two years of the program, we have educated over 5,000 kids about Fair Trade!

5. World Fair Trade Day 2009: US organizers set the goal at 55,000 participants in the 2009 Fair Trade Coffee/Chocolate/Etc break and very nearly reached it with 40,000 participants! Global Exchange Fair Traders from this listserv participated around the country, in their homes, at small gathering, and at a party in our San Francisco offices, making up nearly 800 of the participants nationwide.

In short, thank you for your enthusiastic participation in educating a staggering number of people - in the millions - about Fair Trade over the past year!!! Thank you for supporting the efforts of Fair Trade producers to build a better future for their families…and I bet there are a lot of Fair Trade producers out there who are grateful to you, too, for helping to transform their lives!

There will be plenty more fabulous opportunities to participate and make a difference with the Global Exchange Fair Trade Campaign between now and the next World Fair Trade Day -both on the actions listed above and brand new activities we're developing - and the Fair Trade Team is looking forward to working with you on every one of them!